In each region we operate, we have the appropriate regulatory licence and/or permission, and are governed by the relevant local regulatory authorities.
We're happy to announce that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has directly authorised Lightyear UK, a company under the Lightyear group. If you’re a Lightyear customer and your address is in the United Kingdom, this means there’ll be some changes to how your account is regulated.
What’s changing
Account set-up
Current set-up: all personal and business accounts are provided by Lightyear Financial Ltd (FRN 955739), an appointed representative (AR) of RiskSave Technologies Ltd, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 775330, FCA). Lightyear is registered in England and Wales (No. 12925823), at 256-260 Old Street, London EC1V 9DD. You can find us listed as an AR directly on the FCA website here.
Broker services are provided by Lightyear Europe AS. Lightyear Europe AS (Lightyear Europe) is authorised and regulated as an investment firm by the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority (Finantsinspektsioon, FSA) under activity licence number 4.1-1/31. Lightyear Europe is a company registered in Estonia with company number 16235024 and registered office at Volta 1, Tallinn 10412, Estonia. You can find us listed as a licensed investment firm directly on the FSA website here.
New set-up: all personal and business accounts of Lightyear customers based in the UK will be migrated, and assets will be transferred to Lightyear UK.
- Your customer agreement will only be with Lightyear UK (Lightyear U.K. Ltd), who’ll serve as a custodian for safeguarding your assets.
- Lightyear UK will take on any claims, complaints, liabilities, entitlements and anything else that you currently have in place with Lightyear Financial Ltd.
- After migration, we’ll send you the new bank details for any manual transfers. (Until this time, keep using the current details).
FSCS protection
Your assets will be protected up to the FSCS limit of £85,000 per customer, per financial institution. This will come into force once we’ve completed the migration of your assets; the protection scheme for your assets will change from the Estonian Investor Protection Sectoral Fund (the scheme for Lightyear Europe) to Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS – the scheme for Lightyear UK).
Other changes
- ISAs for personal accounts: Lightyear UK Terms of Service will include new product-specific provisions for Cash ISAs and Stocks and Shares ISAs for personal accounts. So these will be coming (very) soon!
- Data controller: Lightyear UK will be the new data controller in respect of your personal data.
- No negative changes to the service or support you get: you’ll continue to get the same quality of service, and pricing will not change as a result of this.
When is this changing?
All personal and business accounts - including all uninvested cash and assets - will be migrated to Lightyear UK between 21.12.2024 and 16.01.2025.
From that date onwards, the Lightyear UK Terms of Service (for both personal and business accounts) and other relevant documents accessible here will apply to your relationship with Lightyear UK.
If you’d like to close your accounts because of these changes, you can do so before the migration takes place. If you don’t close your accounts with Lightyear before the migration, you'll automatically be:
i) consenting to the migration of your accounts from Lightyear Financial Ltd, and to the transfer of your uninvested cash and the safeguarding of your assets from Lightyear Europe to Lightyear UK; and
ii) accepting the Terms of Service of Lightyear UK (for both personal and business accounts).
This consent and acceptance of terms is automatic, so you don’t need to do anything.
If you have any questions, please email support@lightyear.com.